


Hidden in the Sound

by nilchance



Series: hunter!AU [4]
Category: EverymanHYBRID, Slender Man Mythos
Genre: Gen, Mindfuck, Purgatory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-28
Updated: 2012-12-28
Packaged: 2017-11-22 16:46:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/611998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nilchance/pseuds/nilchance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Why did god create a dual universe? So he might say, "Be not like me. I am alone." And it might be heard."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hidden in the Sound

Evan has nightmares. He doesn’t talk about them, but they live in each other’s pocket these days. Alex watches over Evan’s sleep, his thumb already resting on the plunger of the syringe so that sedative drools out the tip. It’s a little too intimate, a little too much like suicide watch or voyeurism; Alex tries to pretend that he doesn’t remember the noises Evan makes in his dreams, his frown, the jerk of his head as if he’s telling the demon no, no, no.

Once, eyes still closed, Evan says to Alex, “You got to promise me something, kid.”

Alex makes a noncommittal noise.

“If the demon gets out and you can’t stop it, you even _think_ you can’t--” Evan opens his eyes. The pupil is swallowed up, like HABIT will hook its fingers into the iris and climb out. “You got to promise me you’ll shoot me.”

Alex’s heart lurches. “It’s not going to get out.”

This is a lie. The demon’s gotten out before, and Alex should know; he has a raw patch on his ankle where it started to skin him. The sedatives are wearing out. Alex is wearing out.

Three days, no sleep. Coffee. Pills.

“Promise me,” Evan says. His voice cracks: “I don’t want to hurt anybody, Alex. Please.”

Alex could refuse. He knows that. He could say ‘or what?’, he could play dumb. He’s good at dumb. Except he also knows that the knife is on Evan’s nightstand and Evan could get there first, and that nothing Alex could do would keep Evan alive if he really wanted to end it. Too many emergency weapons tucked away in the car, too many monsters, too much chance that Alex would slip.

Dully, Alex says, “Okay.”

“You gotta say it.”

“I promise,” Alex says. He imagines two bullets, chambered. Resting the barrel in his mouth after Evan is dead. It’s almost peaceful, like sinking. “I won’t let it hurt anybody else.”

Searching Alex’s face, Evan demands, “Or you?”

It’s too late for either of them.

Alex holds Evan’s eyes, unblinking. “You want me to lie?”  
***  
 _”You think you’re untouchable? Not even God can hide from me.”_

Alex wakes up, already reaching for his knife.

Evan catches his wrist before he’s halfway there. “Hey, nope, nope,” he says, in that way he thinks is soothing. “No. It’s okay.”

It’s not HABIT holding him; the demon could’ve just slit Alex belly to throat in his sleep. Blinking, Alex orients himself. They’re in the car, stopped on the shoulder of some back road in Missouri. There’s a book open in Alex’s lap, one of Bobby’s, almost spilling from his lap. Alex flexes his fingers in Evan’s grip so he can right the book, because Bobby would have his ass if the book came back busted, but Evan doesn’t let him go.

His head hurts. It feels thick and snotty, like he has a cold. “Why’d we stop?”

Evan frowns at him. “You were talking in your sleep.”

( _the blade comes down on Jeff’s fingers with a brittle wet sound_ )

“So what?” Alex doesn’t mean to snap, but his head is killing him. He shakes Evan off, finally, rearranges the book and picks up his coffee. His gross cold coffee. It’s his fourth cup since nightfall, for all the good it did him. He chugs it like it’s the antidote and pretends that’s why he shudders.

( _and Jeff cries out, like his soul is being torn out of him every time the demon gets him to scream_ )

“Dude,” Evan says, softer, and touches Alex’s face. His fingers come away wet, and for a moment Alex expects blood.

It’s only water, though, and meaningless.

Alex shrugs Evan off and wipes his face with his sleeve. Not taking the hint, Evan curves his hand around the nape of Alex’s neck. His hand is rough and warms Alex all down his spine.

Sometimes, when Evan runs his hands over Alex to check for injuries or when Evan’s stripping heedlessly on his way to the shower, Alex has to check himself. It’s a sign of his fucked-up priorities that remembering Evan hosts a demon doesn’t cool his jets, but thinking of the way Jeff looked at Evan when Evan wasn’t looking... yeah.

Evan loves like a nuclear reactor with broken shielding, and people got sucked into that, but he loved Jeff first and Stephanie best. If the world hadn’t gone all creepypasta, Alex would’ve been on the radar until he went to college, and then forgotten once he was out of sight. He knows that.

The dream-film of Jeff being slaughtered like a ( _rabbit_ ) deer is still ringing in Alex’s ears, and he can almost smell the coppery blood, and yet he’s thinking about whether Evan likes him. It’s pathetic.

“You were talking to Jeff in your sleep, bud,” Evan says.

“Was I? I don’t really remember.”

“You’re full of shit,” Evan says, amiable.

Because he can’t really argue with that, he’s always been a liar ( _liar liar liar_ ), Alex shrugs. The nightmare is slipping off him by reluctant inches, like swamp muck. “Did I say anything else?”

“Just ‘Jeff’ and ‘no’. Over and over.” Evan doesn’t waver, holding him to the seat. “You know, your brother, he’d rather you turn out alive and him dead than the other way around.”

Alex thinks of his parents’ funeral. Jeff had kept his fingers clenched in the fabric of Alex’s shirt, even when he had to call the insurance company or talk to the police, and so Alex had been there when Aunt Pat had refused to take him in. The two closed caskets. People had looked embarrassed to be there with them, didn’t stay, wouldn’t look them in the eye. When Evan and Vin got to the funeral home, when Vinnie put his arms around Jeff and held him for a long time, whispering, and Jeff’s grip on Alex relaxed slow until Jeff was clinging to Vin instead. Evan had told Alex that he’d fed Sparky, that she was okay, that his mom made them pie; concrete help. Mostly Alex remembers the way strangers kept saying things, stupid things, ‘your parents are with the angels now’ or ‘they’re in a better place’ or ‘things work out for the best.’

He’d been so angry, because no, clearly things didn’t work out. And even if they did, wait, there’d be a car wreck or a fire or--

( _”you’d be surprised what I can take from you”_ )

That same anger pours over him now. He doesn’t trust himself to talk without saying something terrible to Evan. He jerks away from Evan, leans his hot cheek on the window.

Evan puts a hand on Alex’s knee, rocking it back and forth. “Hey.”

Irritable, Alex twitches his knee away. “Quit it. What are you, four?”

“Bossy,” Evan sighs. “Get some more sleep, we’re still a while out.”

“I’m not tired.” It comes out little-kid sullen, and Evan snorts. Alex scrunches further against the car door. Because Evan isn’t going to leave it alone, he adds as if it’s a grudging secret, “I haven’t slept great since the Rake. I don’t know, maybe it broke my brain.”

( _liar liar liar_ )

“More than it was already, huh?” Evan grins sidelong. “Well, it oughta help when we gank that bitch.”

Alex whips around to stare at Evan, but Evan is starting the car up again and misses Alex’s reaction. The stereo kicks on, pounding bass; at least they never fight over music. Alex shapes his mouth around the words ‘we already killed it’, but. Did they? Is that right?

Vinnie was right all those months ago. Alex is losing it.

“Maybe,” he says lamely. “Maybe it will.”  
****  
They get to the property.

They split up.

This is a stupid decision, but Alex can’t say they had another choice. It’s like the difference between watching a scary movie and playing survival horror; in the first, he’d yell insults at the movie-characters for going into the murder house, and in the second, he was holding the controller and knowing he had to go into the murder house to play the game.

So they split up. There’s a missing girl, a sprawling acre of abandoned farm to search, a ticking clock. Neither of them admit that the girl is probably dead.

Alex flicks his flashlight beam into the yawning mouth of the storm cellar. The stairs are burnt out, a drop of ten or twelve feet to the floor. He smells ashes and wood-rot.

In the darkness, he can hear the stifled sounds of somebody try to cry quietly. As the beam crosses water-logged toys and broken electronics, the sobbing hitches to a stop.

Speaking of bad ideas, he’s about to follow sobs into an abandoned cellar.

Alex tries to remember the girl’s name. He kneels down by the rim of the cellar, making himself small, and sticks the flashlight in his mouth. One-handed, he holds the gun and starts to lower himself into the dark. He’ll thank Evan later for making him do one-armed pull-ups.

He drops to the ground, impact ringing up his legs. His knee will be blown before he’s forty, probably. The flashlight strobes across the walls before he retrieves it, holding it above the gun like Bobby told them. There’s no sign of the girl. He likes this less every second. He takes the safety off his gun.

There’s a voice, a man’s voice, so muffled that Alex can’t make out individual words. He moves so that the wall is at his back, the scuffing noises of his boots incredibly loud. The voice loses and gains clarity like it’s coming from underwater, but he realizes that he _knows_ that voice.

Except Vinnie is dead.

“--sort of makes sense. Jeff’s house... ha. Alex.” Vinnie sounds like his heart’s breaking, the ‘ha’ shaped like word bubbles or like somebody who’s forgotten how to laugh. “Ha.”

Maybe they made a mistake, maybe the ceiling beam didn’t pin Vinnie to the floor, maybe he got out.

Except that can’t be true. There had been bodies. Vinnie’s mom, crying. No. No mistake.

Alex wets his lips. “Vinnie?”

The ghost-voice sharpens immediately. “Alex?”

That moment of connection is water in the desert. The air feels thick and electric. He wants it to be real, he wants it to be Vinnie. His hands are trembling around the gun. He makes himself breathe around the lump in his throat. He knows this is a trick, has to be, but...

(but maybe Jeff is alive)

“Yo, Vin!”

The humming, something-is-coming feeling pops suddenly; there’s a flare of light and pressure in his ears. Alex ducks automatically and closes his eyes.

Cool fingers curl around his arm.

He almost pulls the trigger on reflex, his head snapping around. He expects to see Vinnie. It would make sense.

“Hi, Alex,” Jessa says.

Alex has been strangled by ghosts, thrown into walls, shoved down stairs. That one ghost in Virginia tried to reach through Evan and squeeze his heart silent. But Alex has never had a ghost touch him, solid, holding him when he tries to wrench free. Jessa looks _alive_ , even if her hands are freezing.

She looks the same as the last time he saw her, though Jessa never seemed so sad. She’s tiny and she hasn’t aged a day. She looks eighteen. She looks like they’re the same age now. Her fingers don’t close all the way around his arm.

Alex opens his mouth, then closes it. He doesn’t know what to say. _I’m sorry Jeff died for me. I’m sorry I thought you just left. I’m sorry I’m not worth it._

What he does say is, “um, hi. I thought you were dead.”

Jeff was better with people.

“I am dead,” she says, an almost-smile crinkling her eyes. “Sorry, but we don’t have much time. They’re coming for me.”

Alex tenses. “They? Who’s they? Let me call Evan, we’ll get you out of here.”

“I’m here to get _you_ out, Alex. Doctor Corenthal sent me to get you guys somewhere safer.” When he glances around the cellar, she shakes her head. Her touch is starting to remind him of frostbite. “Don’t you get it? None of this is real. It’s a dream they gave you to keep you busy until they need you. It’s a prison. Evan just got dragged along because you wanted him with you and the demon--”

“Who’s they?” he repeats, trying now to get his arm free. He’ll wake up in a minute, he sees it now. He wants Vinnie and Jessa to be alive too much and he shouldn’t have believed it.

Jessa leans closer to him. If she was breathing, he’d feel her breath. Her voice is low, so unlike his laughing bright memory of her. “Jeff is alive.”

Alex flinches. “That’s not true. I saw him die.”

“How?”

(pills, drowning, a box cutter, a car crash) 

“He was taken by Slender Man,” Alex says. A small mean part of him is gratified by the way the name makes her uncomfortable. “Like you. Nobody comes back from that.”

“Like us. You were the one the Man took, Alex. Do you remember?” Jessa peers at him. “Vinnie’s car, the dead end. The bags.”

(plastic sliding across his face)

When Alex hesitates, Jessa says, “You thought you were dreaming when you saw HABIT gut him, but that was the truth. That was it. Our Jeff. HABIT hurt him bad and left him for dead, but Jeff didn’t die.”

“How do you fucking know about--?”

In the distance, there’s a noise like the world’s heart beating. Like wings?

Jessa grabs Alex by the shirt and shakes him, savagely. “He still needs you. So are you going to hide here with Evan and wait to die? Or are you coming with me?”

There’s a bad moment where Alex feels like his heart will rip in two, because he can’t remember if Jessa said Evan would come with him or not, but there’s only one answer. There’s only ever been one answer. If Jeff needs him, he’s going.

As the shadow of those great beating wings blot out the cellar doorway, he grabs her outstretched hand.  
***  
Alex stays for a long few moments with his face in the dirt. His heart is pounding, and his ears are ringing. He tastes blood. Though he wants to run and keep running, he stays down and he listens.

He’s almost given up when he hears Evan cough and then groan. “What the fuck.”

Alex exhales and rolls onto his back. It’s daylight, gray and wormy. There are thin tree branches above him. When he cranes around to look, there’s no sign of Jessa. Or Jeff, or anything he recognizes. Son of a bitch.

Well, she didn’t exactly promise to take him home.

“What the fuck?” Evan complains. “Where the fuck?”

For a minute Alex thinks Evan is going to work his way through who, when, and why the fuck, too. Instead Evan coughs again and asks, “Alex?” 

“I’m here.” Alex struggles to his feet. He feels beaten. Wobbling over to Evan, he helps him up. “You hurt?”

“Nope. What happened?”

Alex shrugs. “Fucked up stuff. Timey-wimey. Blah blah, House of Leaves.”

Evan snorts. “Story of our life, dude. Did you hear wings--?”

From too close, there’s a thin howl. Another joins it. Another. Alex reaches for his gun and doesn’t find it, though there’s three knives in his jacket and another in his boot. He looks at Evan, who holds open his coat to show that he’s similarly out of guns.

As one, they start running. The werewolves aren’t far behind them.

They don’t stop running for a very long time.

**Author's Note:**

> Summary quote from House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski.


End file.
